Into the Light: A Minecraft Story
by Hoppiholla
Summary: What do you do when you're cast out of the only home you've ever known? And what do you do if that home was Hell? Follows the journey of Talitha, a Netherian girl, into and through the Minecraft world. Read and review!
1. Prologue

_Hey, guys! My first Minecraft story here. I suggest you play the game before you read this, because it will make a lot more sense. I've posted this both here and on the Minecraft Forums, so if you want to read it in its publicly reviewed glory...Also, if you don't know what 'the Nether' looks like and want to find out, Google is your best friend._

_Enjoy!_

_Before: Miana_

No one remembers how we came to Clethe. We simply were...there. Individually standing around, staring at the sky, the ground, the water, drinking our new world in.

Quickly, we came together. Men and women, all of us, in one massive tribe, moving over the land and sucking it dry. Try as we might, the draw of power was too much to resist. We decided that just because we did not know the bounds of Clethe-and it must be said "Kleth-ey"-did not mean we could reap the benefits without forethought.

The first settlement was born, to take from only one place. We called it Topis, and it was built next to the sea on a wide delta. Water snaked through it, and small sandstone hovels were built to protect the Topisians from the worst of the coastal sandstorms. We became adept at procuring drinkable water from the abundant cacti, and even fashioned cactus-spike clubs when creatures came for us in the night. It was a harsh existence, but an existence none the less.

Soon we yearned for more. We wanted bigger houses, tastier food, more understandable communication, and most importantly, we wanted luxury. Houses, we made, taller, wider, with bigger windows and sweeping balconies. Food we grew now, wheat out of carefully watered fields, life in the middle of the horizon-breaching sandy delta, and eventually we trapped a pair of pigs and used them to formulate the first pork-herd. Even a language was created for us, so no longer did we rely on insistent pointing and guttural growls.

Luxury, however, meant digging. Digging meant the dark.

Soon enough, we had learned that the dark meant dark things. Tall, hobbling green things with the twisted face of tormented souls-creepers, for their lack of sound. Greenish people in tattered clothes and blank, black eyes-zombies. Rail-thin, glowingly white archers we named skeletons for their deceptively frail-looking bone-like outer shell. Red-eyed, black, camouflaged arachnids that climbed the walls. All of these plagued us wherever we went. Topis soon developed its own complement of eager guards and yeomen.

None of these creatures were appealing in the slightest. No one wanted to venture downwards to fend for themselves, or be shut away beneath the sun for any length of time. But it had to be done, and do it we did. A select group of hardened warriors and a large party of resigned miners set up a colony around the largest, deepest cavern they found. They named it Delving.

For long sevendays no word came from Delving, and the people of Topis resigned themselves to the fact the bounties of the deep earth would never be unlocked. But the greatest surprise came when an entire train of carts came back, filled to breaking with wonders we had never seen before.

Iron, shining and silver, conveniently already smelted into bars. Gold, lustrous and deep yellow, magnetically appealing but next to useless practically. Bags and bags of red dust, labelled "redstone." We decided just to call it "the dust." Lapis, extraordinarily blue with flecks of gold, nuggets with one large sphere of melded perfection, with instructions on how to repeat the process.

The most intriguing item, however, was the obsidian.

There was an entire cart full of it, huge lumps of night-black stone. It varied, it shined with purple overtones and the blackest shadows imaginable. It drew in light like sand drew in water, and it drew our people in with it. It was even more attractive than gold, and we huddled around it in both wonder and the grips of a nameless fear.

We decided to make a door out of it, to honor a building in Topis. No one even remembers what building it was, not anymore. But they made a door, wide enough for two people. The obsidian bricks melded seamlessly with each other.

Some maintain to this day that the obsidian door was the cause of all this. That it attracted the attention of the Fates, and that is what threw Topis into the new rush of discovery.

Whatever the reason, be it coincidence or something more sinister, there was a great fire in the center of Topis. With the help of the delta and enthusiastic fire-fighters, it was soon put out, but not without one new discovery.

The obsidian door was...glowing. Within the doorway was a pulsing sheet of murmuring purple, a lighter shade of the tones in the stone itself. The...material swirled and buckled, never ceasing to stop. Occasionally it flared like fire. A quick council was held, but it was decided that the door must be closed, and the intervening purple flow destroyed.

At least, that's what THEY decided.

Before someone could drop water through it-that was the first test-some city idiot ran through, screaming about the discovery of a lifetime. He just wanted the honor of knowledge he should not have tampered with.

As soon as he ran into the portal, the purple jaws snapped shut. The mist seemed to...grab at him, tendrils taking his arms and legs, changing his rebellious roar to a scream of fear. The purple air coursed up his body to his neck where it covered his head, muffling his screams. With an almighty heave, the portal collapsed inward and returned to an innocent swirling wall.

Shouts and screams ran rampant like a fire through wheat. Gossip was already far ahead of order, and nothing could be done to calm people down. Everyone wanted the door gone, but none dared step forward to close it. It was now accepted that this was no mere mist-this was a violent portal.

The council members must have deliberated for an hour when the portal opened again. It spit out the poor man almost disgustedly, but I think that's what everyone was feeling.

His clothes and hair were charred, but his skin was mostly unscathed. He had some kind of dark brown mud all over his legs and feet, and glowing yellow dust was like another layer of skin for him. In his trembling hand, he held a large chunk of some blood-red stone. So his suicide mission had not been a complete failure.

That was the day we discovered the Nether.

At least, that was his name for it-he could barely describe a world of heat, demons, and hell. I need not tell you anything that came between the Discovery and First Journey. Just that I was one of those sent through-I was part of that first terrified group. The council had picked twenty warriors and ten explorers to go through and see what was on the other side of that terrible door. I must say, none of us were too happy. However, we had Guard Captain Thropp with us, the best warrior in the entire city, so we felt reasonably safe.

Our job was to find samples of everything we could and bring it back, even if that meant a living inhabitant. We took this directive without a flinch, and stepped up timidly to the portal. Once again, it gave us no chance to think twice-it reached out and pulled us headlong into the Other.

The sensation was excruciating. Like you were being snapped in pieces and crushed into a pulp at the same time. But none of us thought of that as we came out the other side.

I'm not going to describe the Nether to you without the interfering medium of a painting. It's too terrible at first sight. I can tell you this: it is a world of blood and fire, rock and muck, death and horror. All I can tell you is what happened.

A...thing came hurtling towards us. It was a ghastly creature of white legs and open mouth, shooting flaming projectiles at us before we had time to blink. When we came out of the portal, we were shot out down some sort of hill made of the same stuff the accidental discoverer had, the bloody looking stone. Now we started a full retreat back to the portal.

The explorers went through first. This was what us guards had been trained to do. Thropp screamed at them to get this portal down, and fast. The explorer nodded and leaped through.

Thropp went down first. Our Guard Captain.

My brain kicked into overdrive. Obsidian takes a long time to destroy into small enough pieces to remove. About ten minutes of hard mining. However, with what the burned and bloodied explorers told them, they'd have ten people working on it. That meant one minute.

I counted in my head as the ghast-it's new name-sent fireball after fireball at us. We used our shields if we had to, but the archers were peppering it with iron arrows as fast as they could. A few shields had already disintegrated into sluggishly moving heaps of molten iron.

Round after round of this. We had thirty seconds left. I screamed at them to get through the portal, that it was about to go down. They listened to me, for once. Nine of them-all that were left-got through without delay, throwing swords or firing arrows the whole way. I was just about to go through when I saw him.

One lone man, half his leg gone from a blast, slumped over a fallen comrade, screaming in pain and shooting arrows at the same time. I couldn't just leave him-I can't stand the thought of others in pain...or worse, dying alone, without even the comfort of a blue sky to ease you to sleep.

I went back for him. Leaping over the body he was protecting and fully dragging him to the portal. Fifteen seconds. He limped alongside me before I pulled him up in a bodily lift and ran full pelt for the purple mist. Ten seconds. In an act of complete desperation, I threw him.

For once, the portal worked for us. The purple arms reached out and tugged him through. He was going to see the sky again. That much I was sure of.

Five seconds. So close...I was barely three feet away from the portal, the ghast apparently having gone down from the coat of arrows. I thought I had three seconds left as I dived.

I miscounted. I could see it closing. Screaming to the near-silent world, I desperately forced my sword through. They must have seen it on the other side. They'd know to stop mining...

The portal swirled shut with a sickening, ghostly scream, seemingly drawn down a drain, vanishing into a pinpoint of nothingness. My sword went with it, sheared off neatly, smoking from the power it had come in contact with. I stood there, dumbfounded, with only a hill of truly bloodied stone, now, to thank.

I was left behind, alone in the hellish Nether, without even a sword to defend myself with.

Not even a sword.


	2. Chapter One

_Chapter One: Talitha_

It's dark outside. It's always dark. Unless you count the faint yellow light of the glowstone overhead-that's not quite so dark.

She's outside doing some repair work. The last ghast attack here was pretty bad-a few of them ganged up on the house, and a little bit of one corner's gone. We didn't really expect them to get through the one obsidian wall, but hey-it's life.

Life. What a funny concept.

Just to warn you, I do this a lot-I've got a bit of a split personality. One, happy and open-minded, reveling in the values of living here in Hell. The other...not so much. Bit more on the depressed, raging side. I mean, why SHOULD we have to stay down here, among the fire and flames, when up above there's...something.

Something. That's the only name I have for the world Mom was born in. The one she can't get back to.

But to interrupt my own monologue...I'm not going to introduce you to my whole life story, but here's the long and short of it. My favorite housemate got locked in here for saving some guy, I've never gotten the whole story. She was fighting for her life and sanity before some guy got dumped in here too, for an unidentified reason, and he turned out to be human. They fell in love, etcetera etcetera. She, the other guy, and I holed up in here, keeping each other safe.

They lived like that for a while...eating the occasional fried pigman, defending from ghasts, and trying to find some way to entertain the girl that was going to grow up, literally, in hell.

So here I am. The girl from hell.

"TALITHA!"

And that would be my cue.

I ran outside, making very sure the iron door closed behind me before I leaned outside.

"What, ma'am?" I yelled up.

Our house is far above the ground. It's a pretty big cave in a bloodstone cliff with an obsidian wall facing across our main lava lake. There's one tunnel that leads up to our little system of scaffolding, built to get to the glowstone drops. Inside are three rooms; the main room, with two chairs, a table, a crafting bench, a furnace, and chest; Her room, with her bed, a table, a glowstone lamp, and the horrendously singular bookshelf; and my room, with an itsy bitsy bed and my glowstone lamp. Oh yeah, and my tools.

I'm a pretty good crafter-I can make almost anything. I repair her weapons and armor, and I can make the most of the helpings of redstone she brought over from...wherever she came from. It's fun for me-it's a necessity for her. Can't hold down the homestead without weapons.

Speaking of which...

"Tali, hun, I need the sealant, please," she called. I nodded, forgetting she wouldn't see it, and grabbed the jar from the table inside. It's a paste, pretty strong, made of slowsand and...well...extra slowsand. It keeps things from sliding around, and pretty much just keeps the already sticky obsidian from moving around too much.

She came down to get the jar-there was only so much glass.

She must have been beautiful, once. Big brown eyes. Brown hair that she keeps at her ears, because nobody wants to deal with a ponytail under a helmet. I wouldn't say her lips are red, but they're pretty, if not a little strained after what she's been through. But that's changed, now-she has burn scars all over her, from either the edges of ghast blows or slipping too close to the lava falls. There's a sword scar across her cheek and under her chin where she pissed off a gang of pigmen. There's a burn on her left hand from grabbing me out of the way of a lava pop. All in all, she's a tough lady.

Her name is Miana, and she's my mother.


	3. Chapter Two

_Chapter Two: Talitha_

"Time for bed, Talitha."

It's true—I have a bedtime. It's stupid and juvenile for someone who's been around for fifteen years, but apparently, bedtime in the Nether is dictated by whoever has been around the longest. Remember? No night here.

I sighed, and put down the lamp I was working on. I was so close to getting glowstone dust into the smallest portion possible. It's best not to argue with my mother—she has so much more experience to draw on.

"Can't I just read for a bit?" I begged. Reading is another of my passions. In Mom's room is a bookshelf carved into the bloodstone wall. She writes them all, but she's told me that most are storybooks she remembers from her childhood. Some are stories of her time here, others are basic toolbooks, and one comes from her homeworld, a tiny short one, but from the other world nonetheless. It has leather covers, like the armor pigmen wear, and pages made of an organic substance Mom calls 'paper.' Our books aren't that fancy—just thin sheets of bloodstone with etchings on them. Someday I want to write my own books, my own stories.

She frowned at me, twisting the scar on her cheek. Her healthy hand tapped on her sword hilt, something she does when she's thinking. I put on my best pouting face, and hoped I was still small and cute enough to pass as adorable. Don't get me wrong, I look like a fifteen-year-old, but it's my mother—I should be able to get away with anything. Right?

"Fine," she said, sighing.

Right. I gave her a wide smile and immediately pulled down the dictionary.

The dictionary is one of my favorite books. Mom fills it in whenever she has time, but there's hundreds of words she hasn't had time to put it in. From the definitions, I've learned everything I can about the Other world. There are creatures called creepers who explode if you get too close. There are ores deep below the earth that can fuel a torch indefinitely. There are things called 'lakes'-full of the thing Mom calls water. I think water is what she misses the most. Someday I want to have her see water again...

I turned the pages of the dictionary with a thud, devouring every word I came across. I got to the back of the thick journal-like book and noticed there were new words.

I bent over the pages, closer to the glowstone lamp as I inspected the words.

_Paper—a thin, white, flexible substance made from Papyrus. Used to make books. See Papyrus._

I heard Mom doing something in her room—sounded like she was airing the blanket, a whoosh of air against a solid.

_Papyrus—tall green tubes that are used to make Paper and Sugar. _

The noise was getting louder—what was she doing in there?

_Sugar—a sweet white powder used to make cake, cookies, and other sweet foods._

Now what was a cake?

I put down the dictionary and went to ask her. I had to know before any chance of sleep was vaguely possible.

I opened the door. "Mom, what's a-"

She was fast asleep. No flapping blankets. The whoosh of air was coming from outside. Filled with a nameless fear, I peeked outside through a crack in the obsidian.

I was staring straight into the face of a ghast.


	4. Chapter Three

_Chapter Three: Miana_

I was just about to fall asleep. Just on the edge of a dream, a dream about my husband, my partner, my battle-mate, Perth...

Then I heard her screaming. I sat up bolt upright and automatically had my hand on my sword. As her wordless scream formulated into my name, I jumped out of bed in just a leather shirt and pair of pants, the iron sword bare in my hand.

I sensed the ghast outside before I saw it. The obsidian was cracking—glowing light was coming in as the wall buckled. I knew what disaster was coming.

I sprinted toward Talitha as a muted _boom_ thudded against the wall. I grabbed her under one arm and pulled her back into the house, where I didn't hesitate before pulling over a bookshelf. She gasped under my arm, and tried to grab the books from falling. They didn't matter if we could get out of this house. I let her pick up two before I heard it.

The obsidian outer wall crumbled, half-melting as two ghasts flew into the house. I could see their horrible white tentacles as they floated leisurely to where we were, both charging for another fireball. I already had our travel packs in hand as I propelled her down the corridor behind the bookshelf. It was dark, with only a faint glowstone trail leading down. Eventually it became too steep to run and we slid, sitting on our behinds. I kept Tali firmly in front of me.

We reached the end of the tunnel just as a fireball exploded above us. It sent shards of bloodstone cascading down onto our heads as I shoved Tali out into the cave. There was a small obsidian shelter at the bottom. I bundled her into it.

"Tali, do _not _leave this cave, do you hear me?"

I left her before she could answer, peering out of the cave. I looked around, then back up at the house, and that's the only thing that saved me.

I dived forward, out of the cave and away from my Talitha, as a fireball hit directly behind me. The ground exploded as I scrabbled away from the cave, faintly registering a pain in my foot. Far behind, I could hear Talitha screaming my name.

I made a split-second decision and peeled off right, sprinting with my sword in my hand. All the pigmen tribes were cowering in their burrows, or I might have had a harder time of it. Over, around, and under the red mountains and hills, and I only checked to see that they were both behind me once.

I remembered the bow in my hand. Somehow it must have gotten there. _Tali,_ I thought, as I turned around and fired, making a dangerous choice of aim—the eyes.

My arrow flew true. The howling of the ghast filled the air as it sped directly towards me.


	5. Chapter Four

_Chapter Four: Talitha_

I heard the ghast scream as my mother hit it square in the eye with an arrow. The sound was terrible, absolutely horrifying, but nothing near the fear I felt for my mother.

I streaked from the shelter, abandoning all caution as I ran towards her. You don't grow up running from ghasts and pigmen without building up your speed.

My plans were changed, however, by the ghast that had the annoying habit of firing in your face.

It rose in front of me, its twisted mouth sucking in the hot gases around it as it prepared to blow me to smithereens. My course changed abruptly, swerving left, desperately trying to outrun the monster behind me. I could hear it whistling through the air toward me, the air around its mouth growing hotter and hotter as the fireball grew bigger and bigger.

_Someone had a fair dose of fate today,_ I thought to myself. The vaguely rational part of my mind silenced the decidedly misplaced quip.

I stumbled over a bloodstone spur, and that's luck for you. A fireball the size of a pigman tore through the air over me and hit the ground not three feet from my sprawled figure. I could almost hear the ghast cursing.

Only fifty feet in front of me was the Door. The Door is the one thing Mom has never explained to me—why is there an obsidian doorway in the middle of the Nether, Mom? Not now, Talitha. Maybe later, Talitha. Later was never good enough. Whenever I asked about it, she got a bitter, yet longing look on her face, and would say that I was worth it. She never explained.

Well, here was my chance to learn if I could fit behind it.

It fired again, but too quickly to make any kind of aim. The tiny fireball, barely larger than my head, flew wide. By some freak of chance, it hit the bottom corner of the Door.

There was an explosion much larger than any ghast ball to date. Too big. Also, instead of being fiery and yellow, it was pure purple. When the dust cleared, I was left staring at a swirling sheet of ethereal purple. What was it?

I looked back over my shoulder. The ghast had been hit by an arrow in the back, and was careening dangerously close to a lava lake. Behind him, my mother dropped her bow, her mouth open in an expression of absolute shock.

The expression on her face worried me. It was comprised of the deepest hurt and the most tremendous longing. Her sword almost slipped out of her hand as she drew strength from some deep, locked away part of herself and sprinted towards me and the door.

"What...Tali...Talitha..._TALI, GO!" _she screamed, the sound ripping from her like the homing call of a pigman.

I was confused, and I backed up towards it—I was only a few feet away. What was the rush? We were about to get _blown to pieces by a ghast._

Mom was only ten feet away from me. Too close for fate not to intervene.

The ghast, one quivering arrow through its eye, rose up behind her and smiled. I swear, it smiled, triumphant. The first ghast to ever learn to smile. A fireball fell from its agonized, hellish mouth...

...right onto my mothers' back. I really couldn't deal with this. Too many explosions in one day. This one consumed my mother, and I couldn't process anything else.

Mom was tough. She'd work this out. Sure, she wouldn't be pretty any more, but she was the toughest person I'd ever know...she could work through this...she _had _to work through this. She was still there. Ignore the burning remnants of bloodstone, the ten-foot-deep crater...

This wasn't enough for the ghast. It fired one off right in front of me, not two feet away, and the explosion blew me back, still frozen, staring at the smoldering spot where my mother once was. I flew back two feet, preparing to get to my feet and beat that ghast into a pulp with my bare hands.

The portal wasn't having any of that.


	6. Chapter Five

_Chapter Five: Talitha_

A sheet of purple came over my vision. It seemed that two misty hands had grabbed me around the waist and was pulling me back with surprising force. Just before the accursed portal covered my mouth and muffled all sound, I screamed one word to the empty Nether.

"MOM!"

I was dying. I was being bent over and over in half from top to bottom, top to bottom, over and over again, smaller and smaller. When I could be bent no more, I was compacted, squeezed down into some tiny mote of being. Did I really deserve this? Was this atonement for letting my mother die in front of me?

But nothing could distract me from the pain. It seemed to go on and on—later, when I looked back, I would realize that it was only a few seconds of agony.

The purple jaws decided to spit me out, then. I was sure I was still a tiny mote of Talitha, about to be spat out into some hell even worse than the Nether.

What I saw struck me absolutely dumb.

Above me was an expanse of such deep, deep black I couldn't say where it ended. So black—nothing we had at home was so black. It was so thick and so lovely my mouth only opened and closed, rendered mute by this beautiful ceiling. Spattered across it were tiny motes of light, small as a single filing of glowstone dust...but they weren't yellow. They were a color I had no name for, cool, almost white, but shining so brightly I honestly believed that they could light my entire home. In the midst of all this was a bigger light, even brighter, slowly traveling across the blackness. It's beauty took my breath away. No sarcastic quips, no witty comments. Nothing passed through my mind but one emotion: Awe.

The largest light was directly above me, bathing the world around me in soft whitish, nameless-color light. My eyes grew wide as I stared at it, trying to drink in as many memories as possible, to be able to take them wherever I went. I would always remember the pattern of light across the ground.

Ground—I knew that much. But even that was strange. I was lying on a hard but springy surface, a bright color that matched...where had I seen it before? I still didn't have a name for it. It was somehow organic to me. I would have to learn its name later. The surface underneath me was comprised entirely of thin, flexible strips, soft to the touch and casting interesting shadows. Inspecting one, I gasped as I accidentally tore it off. It was remarkably fragile.

I looked around me. There were spires of wood—that, at least, I knew—covered by tops of what looked like more ground-strips, but thicker in the middle. I ached to touch one, to touch everything, to learn what it was. I wanted to know the name of everything set before me.

I stood shakily, and hurriedly backed away from the portal. I wasn't about to go back through when I knew my mother was—

—alive. Probably waiting for me, going to come through the portal, smiling and crying with joy, if the look on her face had been any indication as to what this world was.

This was her world. The world of water, and infinite ore, and...creepers.

I turned around, a smile on my face. A smile that quickly faded.

A shape was coming towards me through the darkness. I couldn't make out its color, but if it got close enough to the portal, I could either push it through or talk to it, depending on what I thought it was. The only thing I could make out at this distance was that it was tall, with four rounder blobs at the bottom. Was it an inhabitant of this place? Could it help me?

"Hello?" I asked, vaguely raising a hand. It said nothing, merely coming towards me irresistibly. I had a worried feeling growing in my gut, and I tried to peer through the dark to see what it was.

A flash of green came to my sight as it passed the portal. I gasped and started to run backwards.

Of course, with my luck, how could Fate refuse?

I tripped over something, and was left sprawled on my back, gasping for breath. That's the price of being taller than average. Your falls hurt more.

A low hissing assailed my ears as I prepared for another explosion—one that would consume me. Just like the ghast pop consumed my mother.

A twang filled the air and the hiss grew louder, but angrier. Another twang, and the shape stumbled. The last twang felled the beast, toppling it over as the hiss became strangled and died. The sound of running footsteps came toward me as I struggled to get up and meet whatever new danger this was.

"Who goes there? I say, who is that?"

A human voice. I nearly cried in relief. I tried to run toward the voice, but my knees buckled.

"Here, now, you're safe," someone said. A hand pulled me up by the shoulder and brushed me off. "Where do you come from, girl?"

I couldn't speak. I raised a shaking hand towards the whining, pulsing portal. The man with his hand on my shoulder nearly fell over. His jaw certainly dropped to the floor.

"You better come with me!"

The next half hour passed in a daze for me. I was bundled through some kind of tan safe haven, walls soaring high above me as we passed through a gate. Over a clicking surface, grey in color, and into some kind of building through a wooden door. Then they gave me a bed, soft, with red blankets and a fresh white pillow. They shut the door to this small room and blew out the torch just outside, and the room went dark.

I pulled the covers up, and fatigue caught up with me.


	7. Chapter Six

_Chapter Six: Brell_

"I'm too old to be doing this sort of thing," I complained to the guards as they waited by the door. I had on only a cloth shirt and leather pants—but I was going to make them wait until I retrieved my sword. No sword, no Brell.

I've carried my sword constantly since the day of the First Journey. Since the day we lost Miana.

I was determined not to let memories consume me again as I reached for my wooden leg. It was hard not to, however, when you have to carry a reminder of the woman who saved your life—and died in the process—with you every single day. This leg was a small price to pay for the joy of living.

The larger price was having to live with the council that killed her.

I was there when the sword came through. I was there when I croaked to stop, she was alive, and the ghast was down. I was there when the council overrode me. I was there when they denounced me as a madman, no one could survive in there—that the sword was just the efforts of a dying woman to let her perfect Council know it was over.

I can't stand the Council.

"Guard Captain Brell?"

Memories—they're a powerful drug. I sighed, strapping on the wooden leg and standing with a grunt. I attached my scabbard to my belt and gestured for them to lead me on. I knew the way, but was I going to expend energy thinking about it.

I looked more closely at the two lads. They looked far too young to be in the Guard, barely out of their schooling years. The iron armor on them was loose and the helmets under their arms far too large. If I had a say in anything anymore, if Guard Captain wasn't a purely ceremonial position, I wouldn't have allowed them into the Guard.

Moreover, it was night, and no matter how secure the outer stone walls, traveling during the night was dangerous. These boys had probably never even downed a zombie.

The door to my house opened, and the three of us stepped out into the night. It was dark, but the moon was bright enough to see by, so torches were unnecessary. I was glad of that—no night vision with torchlight. We continued through the streets, some wide and paved with stone slabs, others narrow, with just enough room for single file between the sandstone walls of the houses. All the windows were dark, and only a street-torch lit the darkness every few feet.

The walk to the Council Chambers was short. It rose out of the dust, the only entirely stone building in town, and off of its central room was a great glass done, built by a master artisan that had once passed through.

I sighed. Despite its beauty, it was my least favorite building.

The guards ushered me inside. They closed the door behind me, and I immediately felt trapped. Old guards' instinct, I guess.

"Guard Captain Brell," came a deep, resonant voice. Lights around the three thrones grew brighter. The Councillors were illuminated.

Thrane was an old warrior, scarred in more than one place, and never without his sword. I used to respect him, but politics had turned him into just as much of a snob as the other two. Now he wouldn't think of sacrificing a hundred lives to save his own. Sarra was the only female on the council, and was the soothing voice. Her job was to mediate any disputes, and be the chief judicious figure in the city. She was sometimes _too _neutral for me, never taking a side or speaking an opinion that was her own. Kelsop was a politician through and through, ruthless, shrewd, and silver-tongued. He could talk his way out of anything and anything out of anyone. I despised him for his games.

Thrane was speaking now. Guess they know my weaknesses.

"Captain Brell, it has come to our attention that an old matter has been reopened," he said, his deep voice resonating through the chamber. I tried to stay at attention, but half a nights' sleep and a hard day of work before were interfering. What did the Council do, _live _in this room? Sarra tried to keep me satisfied.

"The matter is that of the Nether Portal."

Well, she certainly succeeded there.

I snapped to attention, allowing a small gasp before stuttering, "But the portal was abandoned!"

Sarra smiled briefly. "It appears it has been activated. From the other side."

I began to stagger, but righted myself. I must **not **appear weak to these bumbling fools. But..._Miana?_

Kelsop spoke up now, determined to make me see the importance of this—as if I didn't see it already. "Captain, you know the penalty for reopening the Portal. No one in this city would have done it." _Well, aren't you confident. _"We also have proof that it was opened from the other side. At 12:03 this evening, a young lady appeared just outside the active portal. The guard who saved her from a creeper outside the walls said she was...thrown out of the doorway and attempted to contact the creeper." He snorted in derision. "Obviously, she has never been taught the basics of life...in our world. She appears to be human, but who knows with a child from the Nether?"

I felt my fists clenching. _Who are _you _to judge a child?_

Sarra, perhaps, saw this, for she continued quickly. "We would like you to question the girl, and ascertain whether or not she is, in fact, from the Nether. We would also like to know how exactly she activated the portal and got here."

I folded my arms and snorted. "So you want me to do the dirty work?"

Kelsop was about to berate me, but Sarra intervened. "If you'll accept it, yes. We will not harm the girl." She turned to the two guards standing by the door. "Please bring in the girl."

I turned around as the door opened, not really trying to figure this out. Thinking about this was better for a time when there wasn't a child to question.

A guard showed a girl in, thankfully not using force. She was a child, after all.

The first thing I registered was her skin. It was darkly tanned, almost red, but didn't look damaged at all—the kind of tan you get by lying in the sun for a full month. It contrasted sharply against her hair, which was down past her shoulders and such a dark brown, it was almost black. She was dressed in rough leather trousers and a scrappy shirt—small wonder, if she grew up in Hell. Her eyes were almost unnaturally large, but the effect was actually rather pretty. The irises, a startling light brown, were bigger than any I had seen before, with deep pupils to match. In this bright light, they were contracted to pinpoints, smaller than any eye I had seen in even the brightest day. She wasn't peering or squinting at all—as if she could see everything clearly. Which she probably could.

And she looked so much like Miana it took my breath away.

_Miana, Miana, Miana...always knew how to get under the Council's skin, eh?_

For a second, I entertained the hope that somehow she had come back. That the fiery spirit I had loved—always, always loved—had found a way to come back, compressed into a child's body. But my rational mind caught up, and silenced me.

I had to pay attention to the matter at hand.

"What's your name, hun?"

She looked up at me from behind those large, large eyes. She seemed to be pulling herself upwards from some pit of grief so deep even I couldn't define it.

"Talitha."

"Talitha, _sir,"_ a guard said meaningfully, and poked her in the ribs to make his point. Without even looking back, she grabbed his hand, twisted his finger, and slapped it away. The boy yelped, covering my low snorting chuckle. The girl, however, saw it and gave me the ghost of a smile.

"Talitha. Can you tell me where you're from, Talitha?"

"Please, sir, just call me Tali. And I'm...I don't know where I'm from." This fact seemed to distress her, so I backed off. No use pursuing a difficult topic.

"Well, Tali, that's alright. Can you tell me anything about how you got here?"

"Through the portal," she blurted. Obviously, she was scared. The response elicited a look from the Council. Sarra stepped forward, trying to pull off a soothing, motherly demeanor. She ended up looking soppy.

"Dear, all we want to know is what's on the other side. You only have to nod." She paused. "Are you from the Nether, dearest?"

Tali hung her head, but nodded and squeaked, "Yes."

Sarra flew back to the Council to deliberate. I decided to get on with the questioning.

"Tali, hun, how? Did you fall in by accident?" That was the most likely situation. It wasn't like there was any advanced life we knew of in the Nether—just ghasts. It was still a heinous crime—she couldn't have been more than a year old, if my memory served me.

It never did.

"No, sir. I was born there, sir." Her response shocked the entire room into silence. Even Kelsop was quiet...for the moment.

"That's impossible, girl. You can't have been born in the Nether. No one lives there!" he scoffed, looking absolutely prepared to turn tail and leave it at that. Thrane, however, kept him in his seat, to hear the girl out.

"No, I was! I had a father and I had...have a mother!" she shouted, immediately incensed for a reason I couldn't identify. Why be so touchy? Ah, but she said _had _and _had,_ not _have._ Her parents must be long gone. It wasn't as terrible a thing to drop a pregnant woman and her husband into the Nether, but still made me weep that humanity had such to offer.

I moved forward, silencing Kelsop with a gesture. "Who's your mother, then, dear?"

She looked up at me, once more stunning me with the lightness of her eyes, and very clearly spoke one word, the word I had been dying to hear for the past sixteen years.

"Miana."

There were only six guards, the council, and myself in here, with a clerk taking notes, but somehow, Talitha managed to cause an uproar. Kelsop was trying to denounce her, Thrane was merely sputtering, and Sarra was busy keeping Kelsop on his pedestal. The younger guards were confused—who the heck is Miana?-but the four other older guards and I knew what was going on. I, on the other hand, nearly collapsed, suddenly feeling my wooden leg very heavily indeed.

"Miana? That's impossible!" Kelsop called, outraged. I once more silenced him with an ice cold glare.

"You seem to think a lot of things are impossible. Sir," I said scathingly. He gaped at me before speaking again.

"You're lying! Guardswoman Miana is dead, she was rendered so after fighting bravely in the Nether!" he called, seeming to say 'She made that up! She made that up!'

Just like a child.

"I am _not_ lying!" A change came over her face—speculative. I wondered if it would last.

"You...you're Councilor Kelsop?" she asked, timidly. The man drew himself up proudly and nodded—maybe he hoped to intimidate her. I doubted that.

"_You!" _she screeched. It was all I could do to keep from flinching at her tone, and the hate and sorrow I could hear behind it. "My mother has been living in the Nether for sixteen _years _because of you!"

Kelsop stepped back, offended, about to take physical action, when Sarra stepped forward, tranquil, calm, and composed.

"Child, you must be thinking of another woman—Mana? Mama?-Miana is dead. The Council would not have left a patriotic woman to die-"

"I'll be damned if that isn't the thinnest lie I've ever heard, Councilwoman. Remember? I was there."

This outburst stunned even me, and I was the one who said it. I stunned everyone in the room to silence once again, but I stood tall. They couldn't do anything to me. Talitha still looked ready to kill, and I almost wanted to say tiredly, _Give up. It's no use. Believe me, I've tried to make them feel their actions. Let it be, child._

"Guard. Captain. Brell." My name was spoken like a curse by Thrane, who had been silent until now. "Return to your home. Take this girl with you—indoctrinate her to the ways of the city. Until she is fully absorbed and assimilated, the Council does _not _wish to hear of her again. Is that clear?"

It was a demand, not a question. They wanted me to make her like every other person working, living, and dying in this godforsaken town. She would never be the same to me. She was part of Miana—she was part of me.

"Crystal, Councilor."


	8. Chapter Seven

_Chapter Seven: Brell_

It was only when I opened the door to my small house, unescorted, did I realize the responsibility I was taking upon myself. I had just half-adopted the daughter of the woman I loved. 

It wasn't like I couldn't support her. The house I lived in was big enough for three. It was of standard Topis build—three tiered floors, the smallest on top a one-room box, almost completely made of sandstone. All three roof decks were connected by ladders, and the wooden support beams stuck out on the sides. The ceilings were low, but the first floor had a drop down to make it a bigger room. The first floor had our small kitchen, living room, and the privy. The second had two bedrooms and a communal closet. The top, my room, was just a bedroom and a few chests for clothes. Outside was a small garden and mini-farm, a few yellow-leafed suntrees, a tiny pool of water, and the crafting shed, leaning against the house wall with a few crafting benches and a furnace inside. Around all this was a man-sized sandstone wall, with quite a few windows poked into the outside and a single iron gate to the street.

It wasn't a big house, but it wasn't a house that was used to children. I had planned on them, of course, but my plans got lost somewhere in the guard duty. Now I was just an old lonely captain.

I glanced over at Talitha as I opened the gate and ushered her inside. She looked tired—no, not simply tired, exhausted—and stumbled up to the door of the house. There was a star cutout with glass, and she smiled vaguely at it as we went inside. She stumbled a little on the steps down, and looked around at the sandy walls and wooden floor with interest.

The torches were almost burned down, and I cursed. I relit a couple so I could see, and led Talitha over to the steep stairs up.

The torches upstairs were entirely dark, and had not been lit since that morning. Well, yesterday morning: I could see the sky lightening out one of the glassed windows. We tiptoed past the closed door of one of the rooms as I held a finger to my lips. I didn't want to disturb Keelan. I opened the door to one room I had never used before.

It was mostly full of boxes, crates, and chests, but somewhere under the heaps of papers and crates was a bed, a desk, and a chest of old clothes. Somewhere. I didn't bother lighting the four torches, and with one arm swept the refuse and dust off the bed. The covers were thin red cotton, perfect for our coastal habitat, and I tucked the girl in.

"Thanks..." she mumbled, but she was asleep before I quietly shut the door. I had a small smile on my face before I grumbled.

"Nothing is ever easy."

I went upstairs to try and catch a few more hours of my own sleep before the day began. If I had any feeling for things any more, this was going to be hard to explain.

I opened my eyes with a groggy groan as I heard the shrieks from downstairs. I nearly hit my head on my low ceiling and emitted a long stream of curses before I realized it was Keelan yelling.

I crawled across the floor, still dressed in yesterday's clothes, and half-dropped down the ladder to the second story. I wondered if I had slept at all, or if I had just stared at the ceiling all morning. It was now full day, about nine o'clock, and I had never slept so late.

The shouting was coming from the room I had put Talitha in, and I stood up and dusted myself off before I entered.

Just so you know, Keelan is my son. He doesn't look much like me, more like the mother who left us behind. He has blue eyes and light brown hair, and he's a big kid. He just turned sixteen a little while ago, and on his birthday, got an apprenticeship from the blacksmith, so he's got the kind of muscles I never had. He's already taller than me. He manages to sometimes twist his nose somehow so he looks like he's caught mid-sneeze, and that's the face he was wearing now as he stared down at the bed.

Talitha was up too, her long black hair wild around her head. She seemed to be trying to burrow into the bed while shrilling just as loud as Keelan was. When she saw me coming up behind him, she cut it off as suddenly as I had appeared. Keelan kept going on, and on, and on...

"Keelan, shut _up!"_ I cried, lightly punching him on his arm. He choked it off less quickly than the girl had, but he had the grace to look embarrassed.

"Dad! There's someone in the bed!" he said. I rolled my eyes. He's usually a bright kid, I swear.

"Yes, Keelan, there is. Her name is Talitha, and you better get used to it." His eyes went wider, and his eyebrows came down in confusion.

"What?"

"Yeah, well, the Council kind of...assigned her to me." Talitha raised an eyebrow at me, but I shook my head slightly. Keelan kept glancing from her to me.

"You mean she's going to live with us?" I nodded. He narrowed his eyes, appraising the inhabitant of the bed. "Why does she look so _weird?"_

Although I agreed with him in my own mind—Talitha's looks may be humanoid, but they were certainly other worldly—it occurred to me that this was something very rude to say.

"Why do _you _look so weird?" the girl snapped before I could issue a reprimand. I chuckled while Keelan glared back at her. The boy stuck his tongue out—and he's sixteen—and waltzed out. Talitha giggled a little and nodded at me. I took my cue, smiled, and left. She would probably want to explore her new room.

Heck, she would probably want to explore her new _world._


End file.
